Ares had been in this position before!... Not lying down on the ground injured and unable to move... Though he'd also been that multiple times before too. No, the point was that he'd been in a situation wherein he was given the option to choose between three different rewards before! Last time it was Drai, the sect master of Oasis back in Xasca. Ares still hadn't used the material he chose as a reward for his work, the feather, but he hadn't had much time to in his defence. It wasn't laziness!... And it certainly wasn't because he didn't want a certain big beaked idiot bird Garuda getting all cocky and arrogant after his artifact was levelled up... Nope, definitely not...
Anyway, last time Ares had to choose between three rewards it was a slightly easier choice because there was a clear standout. This time things were different due to the quality of the reward which was multiple times higher on average and so Ares really had to think things over more than once to make sure he was getting the best deal he possibly could here. Oohs and aahs could be heard in the spectators seats even from where Ares was currently standing down in the fenced area with his enhanced hearing. Their reactions were entirely understandable, however, because what Finnian was offering here was something incredibly rare, something Ares had only heard about in passing. To the best of his recollection, nobody he'd met had ever taken one of the resources displayed before him and there was a good reason for that; they typically didn't appear in lower domains at all. If they did, it was typically in an auction and the source was almost definitely a higher domain cultivator looking to silently pawn off goods that weren't exactly acquired legally. The only reason Ares even knew what he was looking at was because Dominus whistled in his head and said it out loud, evidently impressed by the generosity of the sect for handing something like this out like candy... Well, the condition to earn it was strict but that was under the assumption the contestant striving for forty points wasn't Ares; his appearance sort of changed the dynamic a bit and turned a hard challenge into a walk in the park.
So what exactly where these three resources that had everyone riled up and gossiping amongst themselves about which ones they'd pick if they could? Their official name was 'art attribute adapters', or 'AAAs' for short. Put simply, when one was used, they could imbue a learned art with another element or pillar's influence. For instance, if someone knew the art 'fireball', they could add a lightning AAA to that one art specifically to supercharge it and create a ball of lightning-fuelled Fire that travelled at nearly five times the speed of the original art and shocked the opponent in addition to burning them. Perhaps even that was an understated description of the final changes, and growing the art by cultivating and training it could also result in further changes later on like adding a chain lightning effect to the Fireball's detonation, but the point was that a single one of these AAAs could mutate an art and enhance it significantly.
The interaction between AAAs and arts was usually readily apparent, it was entirely possible to predict what would change when consuming one, but every now and then there were unintended side effects or evolutionary paths that weren't initially obvious. For instance, a plant and nature oriented cultivator once used a poison type AAA to create mutated 'Spitters', plants that spewed poison at opponents instead of the usual seed barrage they were typically known for. The seeds were replaced with poisonous blobs that were less deadly on impact but caused much more severe harm overall as the invasive poison slowly killed the target and slowed their movements, allowing them to be hit by even more poisonous blobs which resulted in a deathly cycle that was hard to escape from. This was great and all but eventually the cultivator found another interesting variation of the Spitter art by experimenting with the applications her poison AAA brought about, Spitter Graveyard. The poison was an adaptation but it still ultimately let the plant nature win out in the end, showing deferential treatment and giving in to what the cultivator had planned for the combination. But...
What if the poison 'won' instead?
What if the poison was allowed to become the base of the Spitter art instead of the nature magic and had more mana funneled towards it? With some experimentation, the poison was found to be capable of melting the Spitters down into a highly toxic field that was extraordinarily deadly when set up as a trap in advance. The area itself was impossible survive in for long periods of time and the ground would quite literally spit poison at anyone caught within it. Instead of an aggressive plant that could be summoned at will and fire poison effectively against a single foe, the Graveyard was a tool for ambushing groups of foes all at once n a wide area. One art turned into two completely different avenues, both of which were powerful, but the latter had been quite unexpected. Instead of the default art retaining its usual traits and unbendingly sticking to convention, the AAA was given permission to shine and shine it did. The cultivator broadened her skillset and was one of the major tools she accredited her later success in life to, claiming she would have died multiple times over without the Graveyard at her disposal. Situations like this weren't always the case, AAAs didn't always come through in unexpected ways for the consumer, but it went to show that careful selection of AAAs was important and having a good eye for this sort of stuff would be extremely handy. You'd almost always get what you were bargaining and aiming for, that was the easy party, but looking beyond the visible surface and finding hidden potential was the real kicker.
Now that Ares was faced with three different AAAs, and could choose freely whichever he felt moved by, there was a lot to deliberate over. Not just the AAA type but also which art he would use it on to get the maximum possible benefit. A fire type AAA, a psychic type AAA, and an earth type AAA, that was what he was working with here and he could freely pick any one of these options... Where to even begin with these three choices? For starters, Ares could picture an immediate use for all three and he knew exactly which arts he would use them on if he could, it actually didn't take him long to spot the optimal use-cases at all as his mind decided to be sharp in this one moment and see things with striking clarity.
The earth type AAA was easily the most boring but also the most practical and perfectly tailored to what Ares was currently lacking most of all, defence. If he simply used this AAA, and cultivated it to enhance his Crystallised Void: Wall art... Well his ability to block enemy attacks would improve drastically. Wall had its flaws, namely the long chant time due the insufferably long name, but Ares could maybe create a quicker variation of it, one that traded its detonation ability for steadfast protection, if he chose to take this AAA. That or he could simply keep things as they were and then rely on Crystalised Void: Wall for blocking stronger attacks exclusively while keeping the longer chant time; it's not like Ares needed much help with quicker but smaller arts as he just dodged them or cut them down before they became a problem. Keep Wall as is, and use it to snuff out real danger, or come up with a small variant to make it more versatile but less efficient against bigger threats, both were valid options. Regardless, Wall was certainly a reliable option butalso completely uninspired and rather plain.
Maybe Ares could try toying with an annihilation aspect art, using the earth AAA to turn Shock Beads into tiny balls of explosive earth that created abundant barriers on the fly at versatile ranges. He could swap freely between normal explosions, to hassle his foes, and bursts of rocky chunks to tackle smaller arts coming his way with... But Ares was inwardly reluctant. He was pretty certain he could come up with a proper defensive art if he just put his mind to it and wasting this rare opportunity on a gap he was already capable of filing with some spare time and effort... It didn't sit right with him. His destruction pillar was surely able to come up with a better defensive art than relying on an AAA for it, right?! No way an earth AAA would do better work than relying on disintegration for such a need so what this AAA offered him wasn't unique enough to grab his attention fully. Plus, the ideas he had for the other AAAs were far more enticing. The earth AAA wasn't bad, it was merely the least appealing so, with a heavy heart, Ares told it to go kick rocks and quit nagging his brain. If possible, he would have liked all three of these AAAs, and they were practically begging him like devils on their shoulder to steal them all and run away, but he was not that kind of person! He had restraint! He could always find more of these later on in the wider world without needing to antagonise arguably the strongest sect in the world! A sect he was a part of even! Besides, other than the psychic AAA, none of these were on the rarer end of this particular resource type. AAAs like space, time, support, and passive were harder to come by and worth a pretty penny even in comparison to the more common AAAs. Elemental AAAs were more readily available but, from a broader perspective, AAAs were hard to find in general so that wasn't saying much.
Anyway, rarity aside, Ares wouldn't pick the psychic AAA just because it was rarer, he wasn't so materialistic as to engage in such careless frivolity... Though he was leaning towards the psychic AAA for various reasons... Anyway, getting back on track, the fire AAA. This was where Ares' ideas started to get spicy and turn up the heat a little. Grand Annihilation could do with a sprucing. It was great; a relatively cheap art that hit hard, was versatile, could be aimed freely, was quick to chant, and controlled space excellently... But it could do that last thing a teensy bit more excellently with this AAA! If Ares utilised the fire AAA for Grand Annihilation he was dead certain that, at bare minimum, it would start to leave behind golden fire wherever the art landed. He didn't know if the flames would be erratic, controlled and measured, or simply flicker about wherever the art struck and never move from their designated spot. Regardless, this adaptation would allow Ares to restrict his foes' movements nicely without hindering his own. Other than defensive measures, he was somewhat falling behind when it came to pinning down faster foes. It was something he hadn't had to do much but that didn't mean he wasn't aware of the problem. He had his pressure, yes, but another tool in his arsenal to deal with unexpected encounters would never be a bad thing. Plus the flames would also generally make the Grand Annihilation hit harder and that was a change worth considering due to how great the art already was at a baseline level. This one, this AAA, was a real contender. If Ares threw five or six Grand Annihilation in a row, he could leave behind a burning hellscape, impossible to traverse like a labyrinth of carnage in his wake. This AAA was really reeling him in and he very nearly took the bait. It was the first one he saw and he almost didn't even bother checking the other resources... But ultimately he did and he was now at a crossroads. The fire AAA was great... But what the psychic pillar could offer was far more interesting from a calculated perspective. It wasn't offensive possibilities that rivalled the fire AAA, nor would its use be defensive in nature like the earth AAA, this was something tricker.
The art Ares was considering combining with the psychic AAA... Was Quietus Edict! The effect of such a strange mix might not have been obvious at first glance but Ares had seen the true, subtle power of it already and was unable to pretend he wasn't invested. Quietus Edict may have appeared to be a perfect art on the surface, it was essentially the height of on-the-fly anti-magic and you'd be hard pressed to find an art that did what it could to the same capacity. It could be deployed anywhere, at any time, for a mana cost that wasn't as inhibitive as it realistically should have been, was tied to the caster so therefore hard to stop, and didn't affect the user. Every single one of these traits individually was enough to sell an anti magic art, let alone combining them all into one piece of magic that accomplished it all seamlessly. It could legitimately become a top ten art, if it hadn't been tied to a fundamental pillar, due to how general it was in terms of benefitting just about anyone who could use it. You'd never not have a reason to stop your opponent casting arts, unless they were a weapon master supreme who never even touched magic or a freakish body builder who believed heavily in muscle over fairy tales. Both cultivator types were rare, though, and even people of those persuasions used arts too so something like Quietus was always a valuable tool...
But it wasn't perfect!
Not as perfect as it seemed after an initial inspection of what it offered! Let's say, hypothetically, Ares had to fight Aejaz for whatever reason. Quietus would do nothing! Literally zilch. Why? Because of Aejaz' bloodline that allowed him to silent cast arts without needing to speak to begin with! Quietus, foiled! In the most obvious of manners! Yes it prevented speech, and therefore chanting... But what if the other person just... Didn't talk?! Echo, an art Ares was rather proud of, could be silent cast with relative ease to the point even Ares himself learned to do it rather quickly. Ares could win a fight with nothing but silently-cast Echoes and it's not like his adept trait would make it easy. The difference between Ares with Echoes and Ares without Echoes in a fight with no other tools available was night and day. Arts fundamentally changed the way fights played out, and gave those who wielded them a strict edge over the competition, so finding a way to deny them all, regardless of what form they took, was what made the possibilities of Quietus Edict so imposing and oppressive from a neutral perspective... And yet this glaring flaw was there for all to see.
Ares hadn't yet been in a situation where this exploit mattered, he'd never used Quietus on someone who then silent casted in response, but it was definitely doable and a perfectly legitimate and functional response that would make his efforts and art pointless. Ares was concerned he might come across cultivators who took advantage of this fault in the future, not just outside the Blade barrier but even inside it in Vraizon were people were more experienced, so cutting off that future threat here and now felt right. The psychic AAA would rectify the issue, allowing Quietus to silence not only the voice, but also the mind... And maybe a little more? Ares didn't believe for a split second empowering Quietus with psychic mana would only have one measly effect, the possibilities seemed endless the more he thought about it. Still, his main goal, turning Quietus into something absolute and un-cheatable, was paramount. It would be fundamentally impossible to wield mana in any way that mattered so long as Quietus was up and running and Ares appreciated that safety net because it was a form of defence and offense in its own way. One couldn't summon their strongest barriers or launch devastating magic without their arts, after all, so it sort of bled into other territory and became something Omnipotent in function. Mental magic especially was a problem, a lot of those arts could also be silently cast, so that was yet another benefit to this approach and so Ares was basically already sold. As for what else the psychic AAA did for quietus... Again, Ares could speculate, and he already had, but he wouldn't declare anything he was expecting now in case it didn't come true. He could probably train the art to do whatever it was he wanted out of it, within reason, but for now he knew what he was hoping for immediately and would be more than happy to get it at the opportunity cost of the other two AAAs.
"The psychic AAA it is, thank you" Ares, after a minute or two of contemplation, faunally spoke up and informed Finnian of his final choice.
Finnian's eyes narrowed and sharpened because now he was admittedly curious enough about Ares to spare him computational power in his brain beyond the resources he'd originally allocated. There were multiple possibilities here but it was an interesting pick Ares had made in the end. Did he do it because Ares was aware that the psychic type was the rarest AAA, or was he actually being smarter than his usual personality and general act let on? If it was the former, Ares was disappointingly dumb and overconfident in his magic such that he thought money was more valuable than this considerable, permanent, and immediate enhancement of strength. If it was the latter, though, he'd willingly given up on the fire AAA which would have been the clear choice for someone looking to further their destructive capabilities. If that were true then Ares was not the meandering moron he pretended to be with that goofy smile on his face all the time. Even now he was still laying on his back with a overly friendly smile but it started to feel a little insidious to Finnian based on his non-arbitrary choice.
Ares was willingly picking an AAA that served more intricate purposes so his mind must have gravitated towards something not typical of what one would expect of his pillar given it orientation and preference for the overt. He'd chosen something subtle, something more powerful than raw strength, despite that being his specialty, because he knew it would enable his raw strength to a greater degree. From Finnian's point of view, the earth AAA was a bait, the fire AAA was a standard middle of the road option that was neither disappointing nor impressive, and the psychic AAA was where he really started to find Ares interesting if he went down that route with confidence and well thought out plans. Ares was not the brute he should have been based solely on people's expectations of what a destruction champion should represent. Many had assumed he would be brash, chaotic, aggressive, and impulsive but none of that seemed to be applicable. Outwardly, Ares was kind, energetic, fun, and reasonable... To an extent. He was a fairly standard revenant in that regard and so what anyone made of that personality was up to them... But Finnian was seeing the subtle influence of someone who was particularly cautious, working on something bigger in the background, and merely using all the above pretenses as a guise for what he was truly up to when nobody was looking. Searching beyond Ares' aggravating self, which he used as a distraction, there was a real menace with real goals and a suitable cleverness to achieve them too lurking in the shadows of this strange person. That was Finnian's astute observation and he wasn't necessarily wrong either.
"Interesting. Alright, it's yours... Uh, can you even receive it right now or should I hold onto it for a while longer?" Ares may have been smarter than he let on but he was still an injured idiot right now and no matter how much of a pretense this side of him was it was at least real to a certain degree... Ares weakly shook his head so Finnian merely sighed and kept the AAA in his pocket for now. "Ok, and finally, to wrap everything up neatly, I'll hand out the Brotherhood robes now." This was it, the real highlight of the tryouts. These robes were infamous and they represented true power in the cultivation world. They were unique, no other robes out there were quite like them, and seeing one in the wild was a like finding a rare beast. Out of multiple hundreds of billions of people in this universe, only around fifteen would ever wear these robes at any given time. They were not something seen often or, in the case of most people, throughout their entire lives. Everyone wanted a glimpse and it was at least partly the reason many failed challengers hung around, to see what it was they were missing out on. These robes were priceless.